How Home Thermostats Work

You're pretty fortunate if you're able to own a vacation home, but it also means you'll be paying to heat and cool two houses. Programmable home thermostats can actually allow you to keep the heat or air turned off until the day you arrive, but it requires precise planning of your comings and goings in order to get the desired result. Telephone thermostats, on the other hand, allow you to heat or cool your home with a simple phone call.

Telephone thermostats replace your existing home thermostats. They connect to both the heating and cooling system and to your phone line. You simply have to call your property and enter a password on a touch-tone phone to access the controls. Then, you can adjust not only the temperature setting but the entire system mode as well.

Telephone thermostats can handle these functions because they use digital microprocessors as well as a touch-tone detector and telephone interface module. Essentially, you can "talk" to your home thermostat via telephone thanks to the internal telephone access module. A separate phone line isn't necessary, and the telephone thermostat can even coexist with answering machines or voice mail. However, if you have a DSL high-speed Internet connection, you will need a DSL filter on the telephone line that connects to your talking thermostat.

With the advent of the smart phone and their handy applications, or apps, you can bypass the land line altogether to control your home's temperature. Wi-fi based smart thermostats are available now and allow users to control their home's thermostat with the help of a touch-screen smart phone. There are quite a few apps already available, and like most smart phone apps, they aren't very expensive, with a range of free to a few dollars.

As technological advancements make their way to simple devices like thermostats, consumers benefit greatly from the combination of features.

For more information on home thermostats, check out the links on the following page.

Thermostat Location

Ideally, the thermostat should be located in the part of the house where people spend the most time. It should be about 5 feet (1.5 meters) off the ground and at least 18 inches (46 centimeters) away from an outside wall. It should not be exposed to any heat sources other than the air in the room, such as sunlight, other appliances, heater vents, windows or hot-water pipes. It's also best not to put a thermostat near stairways or in corners because they affect the circulation of air.